#149 Peter Johnson

March 09th, 2016

LOCATION: William Head Quarantine Station, near William Head Prison, via William Head Road, (between Parry Bay and Pedder Bay, north of Bentinck Island, south-west of Victoria, south of Metchosin). Inaccessible to the public.

You’ve heard of Ellis Island in New York. Lesser-known equivalents in eastern Canada were Lawlor’s Island in Halifax and the Grosse Isle quarantine station in Quebec. Few know the West Coast had its own quarantine centre for migrants and travellers, located southwest of Victoria, to prevent the spread of smallpox, cholera, typhus, and polio into the Canadian population. As thoroughly documented by Peter Johnson in Quarantined: Life and Death at William Head Station, 1872-1959 (Heritage 2013), this site could hold up to 1,000 people in 42 buildings on a 43-hectare site until it’s closure in 1959. The William Head facilities were preceded by the nearby Albert Head Quarantine Station to the north, opened in 1883, but it had lacked a deep-water wharf, adequate water supply, an inshore quarantine steamer to enable officers to meet incoming ships, an all-weather road to connect with Victoria or even a resident medical director.

William Head

Albert Head was named for the husband of Queen Victoria. William Head was named after Sir William E. Parry, a British Arctic navigator and explorer. Peter Johnson had to go to Ottawa to get permission to visit the William Head compound. The peak year of activity for William Head Station was 1927 when 1,068 ships were inspected. Its largest vessel inspected was the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth during World War II.

INTERVIEW:
[The following interview with Peter Johnson was conducted by Mark Forsythe of CBC Radio for B.C. BookWorld.]

BCBW: Depending on where you were coming from, or your station in life, were you were treated differently if you were detained?

PJ: Yes, the whole quarantine system was arranged on the known and workable class system of the British Empire. It carried on. You could be first class—aristocracy; second class—sons of aristocracy; third class—the middle class; or else the poor sods in steerage.

BCBW: Was it also used as a tool for exclusion?

PJ: No question. The politics of privilege and the economics of indifference kept Ottawa from taking on its responsibility. Part of the contract of joining confederation was that the federal government would provide British Columbia with quarantine services. Well, it never did.

In 1871, when B.C. joined Canada, there wasn’t even a federal quarantine office here. It took almost another twenty years for Ottawa to get its act together —they were shamed into it by a little white girl that died without access to any kind of station whatsoever. Certainly the politics of indifference played a role and also the history of racial prejudice. The Chinese were clobbered with a head tax, and in 1903 it doubled to 500 dollars. Often quarantine legislation was used to support policies of deportation or policies of racism. That’s a common theme that runs throughout the book.

BCBW: There were times when quarantine was necessary, and sorting out where it’s needed and where it’s not is part of the journey for you in this book as well?

PJ: Yes, it certainly is. Think of the times, the germ theory had only been around for 10-15 years. Germs were thought to be caused by miasma, not bacteria. A doctor at the bottom of a gangplank checking a vaccination certificate would have to, within a second say, “Were you anywhere near or associated with this person who is ill?” Then take a temperature, look into the eyes and see that general influenza wasn’t there, but, in fact, it was smallpox. And so there were several missed cases because physicians simply didn’t have the diagnostic traditions we have today. I’m surprised that so many were held and it worked. Some of the ones that were missed, of course, went on to generate horrific outbreaks in Vancouver and other places, which brought the whole quarantine station into some question.

BCBW: And this affected our international relationship with Seattle where they said, “We won’t accept ships from Vancouver because we can’t be assured we’re not also importing disease.”

PJ: We didn’t have adequate quarantine legislation. We started from ground zero far too late to be of any real benefit in the last ten years of the 19th century. But, by the Twenties, by God, British Columbia had its act together. When the Albert Head Station closed for letting too many people slip by with infectious diseases, William Head was rebuilt and it did a fine job.

BCBW: As you traced the history of quarantine in B.C., you also tell us about the Chinese Labour Corps. Who were these people and what was their role in World War I?

PJ: There had been precedents for organized movement of indentured Chinese labourers all throughout the 19th century—such as the California gold rush, the CPR railway and the Boer War. And the war in the Balkans needed Chinese labourers. It was as beneficial both to China to send labourers to the European theatre of war as it was for Britain, who needed them. But it was such a sad episode.

The new Chinese government—after the abduction of the Empress in the last dynasty of the Manchus—thought that if they helped Europe with their war, then perhaps Europe would help rid them of the Japanese. They thought one would automatically give back the other. Of course it never happened.

BCBW: What were the jobs of the Chinese Labour Corps?

PJ: They did everything from repairing tanks to working in steel and chemical plants, loading and unloading ships at port, shoring up the trenches, building huts and sandbagging, railway lines. The Chinese Labour Corps—about 96,000 of them, they think—really enabled the front lines to keep going. It took a year to organize everything. The Brits didn’t tell the Chinese what they were doing because China was neutral. China never entered the First World War until August of 1917.

BCBW: They were put into some extremely dangerous situations.

PJ: They would come from three routes: from around Capetown to the Western Front, through the Suez Canal, and around the Horn to Vancouver. And when they did get to France, it was an absolute horror. They landed at Dunkirk and were fired upon. They were gassed as they moved along the line from the Somme to Ypres, and they were involved in whatever front line attacks were going on.

They were a noncombatant force! They were called the Chinese Labour Corps, and that was Churchill’s idea because if we recruit men in the regular army from the hinterlands of the Chinese Mongolian frontier, that’ll break Chinese neutrality, so let’s pretend they are a volunteer force and call them a labour corps.

BCBW: Just providing a service…

PJ: Providing a service. And we’ll pay them 30 cents a day, whereas a regular soldier would make $1.30 a day. I have to hand it to the British War office, as they really organized this fast. Think of it: little Chinese villages on the northern frontier, they wouldn’t be interested in fighting in Europe. Europe was a war-mad continent as far as the Chinese peasants were concerned, but somehow they would recruit thousands of Chinese peasants, many of them illiterate.

BCBW: And when they arrived on B.C. shores, some were quarantined. Or else they had to travel across the country in sealed railway cars.

PJ: That’s how the Prime Minister waived the head tax. If we keep them in sealed trains, there won’t have to be a head tax. The other reason was not to let the Chinese community across the country know what they were doing. The Chinese communities, still embittered by the CPR not living up to the agreement of paying them properly after the building of the railway, could have notified the Chinese Labour Corps on the trains, telling them to get the hell out. They were also afraid that the Germans might catch on to this.

And so they came by ship. Fifty to sixty days from China, another ten days waiting in a sealed part of William Head Quarantine Station. A quarantine station was constructed to handle 1,000 people and many of those would be in tents. Suddenly, by August of 1917, there were 30,000 Chinese labourers at William Head. It was a horror story. They filed out into the community of Metchosin and stole doors and fence posts to lie on, to keep them out of the rain, and raided the gardens for food. There were food riots.

Peter Johnson

BCBW: How many of these labourers transmitted through Canada and came back?

PJ: Numbers vary, I would say a minimum of 84,000 went across Canada, probably 40,000 of those came back to William Head, and they got rid of them as fast as they could. I think the official position was, “Let’s get this over as fast as we can.” It became a terrible footnote to the enormity and pity of the First World War.

BCBW: Why is it important to acknowledge that now?

PJ: For the longest time, the Chinese community in B.C. and Canada, had suffered the brunt of racist policies, both in the administration of quarantine and the general racist policies. The Chinese community wants the rest of Canada to know that many Chinese Labourers worked on behalf of the allies, and supported what was a horrific, losing battle on the Western Front.

They are as much Canadians by virtue of that, and other acts in Canada, as any other immigrant group. So it’s, in a way, an attempt to manifest some sort of great levelling. We are you. You are us. We are all the same. I think immigration history is about that…and it’s very interesting because of the Komagata Maru incident in Vancouver in 1911. The Indians are holding a memorial to that this spring.

So it’s really important that immigrant races tell their story. We’re all immigrants.

BCBW: Is it possible to make some kind of estimate as to how many people actually were buried at William Head?

PJ: Somewhere, there might be a compiled list or a record (death certificates) of all those who died at William Head, but I never came across it directly, because I was really more interested in the politics of the station (federal indifference, patronage, class-ism, racism, and the successful, if subversive, leaps [made at William Head] in the treatment of infectious diseases. Its failures were the failures of people, not the virulence of contagious diseases.

Besides, Wm. Head proper opened in 1893 (after the closure of its ill-equipped predecessor at Albert Head). By that time great strides had already been made in disinfection techniques, fumigation apparatus, vaccination technology, and isolation-hospital care. CEO’s at Wm. Head screamed blue, bloody murder for these improvements. For example, at Grosse Ille Station in Quebec, its 4000 deaths all occurred in 1832 from typhus and Cholera. At that time, these diseases were untreatable. But improvements in sanitation soon after (John Snow in London, 1854) would drastically lower deaths from cholera worldwide. Typhus (trench fever) diminished significantly by the end of WW1; an early vaccine became available in 1896. At Lawlor’s Island Station in Halifax, its deaths only amounted to approximately 500 and 400of these died in 1866 from cholera; again before re-hydration therapy and sanitation improvements became widely used. At Elice Island (NY) only 420 deaths occurred between 1900 -1920, for much of the same reasons. After that time, like at Wm. Head, few deaths occurred.

At William Head, the small numbers of deaths reflected its relatively recent opening. at the end of the 19th century. By then the new germ-theory was rapidly being taught and vaccines were being developed for the major infectious killers. The major killers at the William Head Station were smallpox, leprosy and meningitis. Improvements (and bold research) made at the Station in the treatment of leprosy, lowered its deaths significantly in the 1920s. And the preliminary use of sulfa-drugs and antibiotics controlled it, soon after. Smallpox remained its big killer (rather difficult to spot in the very early stages, outright denial of vaccination by ship’s crews, and poor shipboard isolation of sick, especially steerage passengers) detection…contributed to its longevity.

I think the best guesstimate would be the total of the numbers in the graveyard of its leper colony (on nearby Bentinck Island) and in the numbers in the Station’s graveyard proper. From this, I would guess roughly that the total number of deaths at William Head Station, between 1893 – 1940 to be small…probably no more than 200. However, some, during this time were transferred to better hospitals in Victoria where they subsequently died. these numbers wouldn’t readily show up as deaths at William Head. However, the big issue at William Head throughout its history was the missed diagnosis of those who were already sick. Sick carriers with smallpox, meningitis, and measles DID squeak through the quick, cursory examination by quarantine officials….and they went on to cause some havoc, epidemics and deaths in Vancouver, Port Alberni, Nanaimo and other places on the BC coast.

William Head Station finally became good at the isolation of well people, who were suspected carriers and quarantined until after the incubation period of a given contagious disease was passed. So, a bit of a long answer, but the context is critical. William Head did scan hundreds of thousands of immigrants during its 66 year run. It stopped a polio epidemic in its tracks in 1948, and bold research in infectious disease control and treatment made it in its last years, before antibiotics, renowned.

So, a rough guess of 200 deaths over these years speaks volumes of its, albeit later, success.

—

In 1995, Peter Johnson went looking for a set of petroglyphs near an abandonoed whaling village on the west coast of Vancouver Island. With encouragement from Beth Hill, he published his first book, Glyphs and Gallows: The Rock Art of Clo-oose and the Wreck of the John Bright (Heritage House, 1999), that explores the aboriginal rock art near Clo-oose, the 1869 wreck of the ship John Bright and a bizarre colonial trial in the aftermath of the shipwreck that resulted in the hanging of two Nuu-cha-nulth men at Hesquiat. Father Brabant, the missionary at Hesquiat for more than 30 years, used wood salvaged from the wreck of the John Bright to build his mission. He arrived after the hanging of Katkeena and John Anayitzaschist but recorded evidence as to why he believed the two men were innocent. “The man Katkeena was a simpleton of inferior rank and considered so worthless that not one woman of his tribe would take him as a husband,” Brabant wrote. “…Katkeena could not possibly have been guilty of any misdeeds on this occasion for when the wreck took place and for two weeks later, he was living with friends in Friendly Cove, Nootka Sound.”

Johnson’s second book Voyages of Hope: The Saga of the Bride-Ships (TouchWood, 2002 $17.95) chronicles how and why women on bride-ships were imported to British Columbia as potential wives in the 19th century. Extreme poverty was the main reason women endured 100 days at sea to reach Victoria. One woman was proposed to upon debarkation, and she accepted, but most took longer to forge their new lives. “The mainland and island colonies had few white women,” Johnson wrote. “Prospectors aside, an 1861 census of the white settlers of the mainland colony revealed 1,456 white males and only 192 white females, some 11% of the total population. In 1855, Governor Douglas estimated the white population of Vancouver Island to be 774. The census for that year revealed that of these, only 265 were white women. In both colonies, many of these women were settlers’ wives; single women could be counted on one’s fingers.” Matrimony for women on the bride-ships was oftimes the better part of their valour; others led remarkable, independent lives.

To the Lighthouse (Heritage House, 2015) is a co-authored guide to the more than two dozen operating lighthouses that dot the coast of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. These beacons have guided vessels through the rocky shores of B.C. for more than a century. Some are ideal places to hike and explore; others are dangerous to access. The book rates the danger factor for each lighthouse. Highlighted with beautiful photography from Richard Paddle, who has travelled to every lighthouse in B.C., To the Lighthouse offers details about the history and lore of these landmarks, with practical information about accessibility.

Born in England, Johnson is a retired Vancouver high school teacher of English with degrees from University of Manitoba and University of British Columbia. Quarantined: Life and Death at William Head Station, 1872-1959 received third prize in the annual British Columbia Historical Federation Book Awards competition.

To the Lighthouse: An explorer’s Guide to the Island Lighthouses of Southwestern BC (Heritage House, 2015) $19.95 978-1-77203-046-4 (Co-authored with John Walls, photography by Richard Paddle)

Quarantined: Life and Death at William Head Station, 1872-1959 (Heritage House 2013) $22.95 978-1-92752-731-3

Johnson, Peter. Voyages of Hope: The Saga of the Bride-Ships (TouchWood, 2002) 0-920663-79-6

Johnson, Peter. Glyphs and Gallows: The Rock Art of Clo-oose and the Wreck of the John Bright (Heritage House, 1999)

To The Lighthouse by Peter Johnson & John Walls (Heritage House $19.95)

from BCBW (Winter 2015)
Egyptians built one at the mouth of the Nile. Romans had one at Dover. In Genoa, Christopher Columbus’ uncle tended one; Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather and father managed them in Scotland.

As lighthouses evolved with technological innovations from Swedish mathematician Jonas Norberg, Swiss-French chemist Francois Argand, French aristocrat Antoine Lavoisier, French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel and the Chance brothers of Birmingham, England, they became more than just practical structures to prevent maritime tragedy.

Lighthouses are recognized everywhere as poetic symbols of civilization and hope.

Cape Breton Island had Canada’s first, pre-Confederation lighthouse in 1734. By the 1860s, the B.C. coastline had two of them—at Fisgard and Race Rocks. When government cutbacks threatened to eliminate most lighthouses in B.C., historian and lighthouse activist Donald Graham wrote two classic bestsellers in the mid-1980s, Keepers of the Light and Lights of the Inside Passage.

Now Peter Johnson and John Walls have crafted To The Lighthouse, an ‘explorer’s guidebook’ to twenty-five lighthouses in southwestern B.C.

Boaters and armchair adventurers will likely benefit most from this well-designed anthology as many sites are remote and dangerous to approach. Visitors to lighthouses are not necessarily welcomed by their keepers.

With original photos by Richard Paddle, combined with anecdotes and condensed histories culled from previous books, this smartly-written compendium might have more accurately been entitled Lights of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands.

The attractive directory is history as entertainment in the format of a guidebook. We learn:

•After lightkeeper Alexander Dingwall rowed his wife Eve to their lonely perch on Green Island, circa 1916, she frequently tied her young children to the clothesline to keep the fierce winds from blowing them into the sea.

•At the “really, really hard” to approach Quatsino lighthouse on Kains Island, Catherine Sadler give birth to her third child at the site because her light keeper husband was not permitted to leave his post. When she learned her younger brother died in World War I, she “snapped.” Desperate for help, her husband James flew the station’s ensign upside down for eight days before the family was rescued. Catherine was committed to an insane asylum and never recovered.

•At the “hard” to approach Trial Islands at the southeastern tip of Vancouver Island, the first keeper worked with a pegleg for twenty-five years because he’d lost it when a cable he was towing snapped and recoiled, shattering his shin.

The keeper in 1944 saved the lives of five people whose yacht was smashed to bits.
The keeper in 1997 saved two more lives when two kayakers went into the drink, caught in riptides.

In June of 2009, the keeper saved four more kayakers from drowning by alerting the coast guard of their plight.

That same year, Ottawa decreed Trial Islands Lighthouse would be de-staffed.
•Described as “dead easy” to reach from nearby Victoria, Fisgard was Canada’s first lighthouse on the West Coast, from 1860.

Its third keeper, William Bevis, died on duty. For the next four months, his wife and niece kept the lamp burning every night, all night long, but Ottawa mandarins found out and declared, “It is against the rules of the Dept. to place women in charge of lighthouses.”

In 1898, light keeper Joseph Dare drowned while rowing his skiff to work. William Cormack, his replacement, set the record for the shortest stint on the job. He resigned after twelve days.

•The sea and isolation were not the only hazards. Keepers were obliged to paint their light stations every two years with lead-based paint until the danger of lead poisoning was finally acknowledged.

Liquid mercury was used to float the Fresnel-lamp apparatus that was commonly used from 1900 to 1980. “During those years,” write Johnson and Walls, “an untold number of keepers may have developed Minamata disease… Ottawa did not encourage light keepers who were ill to take time off to seek medical attention. Without records or a physician tracking an illness, the government escaped responsibility and ultimately the payment of any compensation for keepers’ untimely deaths.”

•Recently, when Ottawa planned to de-staff the “hard” to access Entrance Island station, a four-hectare outcropping one kilometre off Gabriola Island, hundreds of kayakers formed a chain around the island, claiming the cost-cutting would only cost lives. Ottawa reneged. It’s still manned. In August of 2014, keeper Tony Greenall saved the lives of nine people from drowning, rushing to their sinking vessel in his own boat. 978-1-77203-046-4

***
The Estevan Controversy

It “really, really hard” to reach Estevan Point, midway up the west coast of Vancouver Island, light keeper Robert Lally and his radio operator reported being attacked by twenty shells from a visible warship about five kilometres offshore on June 20, 1942. Two nine-year-olds at Estevan Point corroborated this story but their views were soon discounted by officials.

Lally’s logbook in which he recorded the incident was seized and has never resurfaced. Ottawa discredited Lally as someone “under stress.”

His assistant and the two children denied Lally was off his rocker, but nobody listened.

The official government version of this story sent shockwaves worldwide: A Canadian lighthouse had been attacked by a Japanese submarine. The Canadian government could more easily justify the incarceration and relocation of 22,000 Japanese Canadians en masse, by November of 1942, as well as the seizure of their fishing boats and properties.

Historian Donald Graham publicly declared on national television that the alleged enemy attack at Estevan Point was bogus. Many now agree.

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